that the boy and youth have the first and most difficult lessons to learn; but frequently even the matured man has still much to learn.  The study is of considerable difficulty in itself, but it is made doubly difficult by novels, which depict the ways of the world and of men who do not exist in real life.  But these are accepted with the credulity of youth, and become incorporated with the mind; so that now, in the place of purely negative ignorance, a whole framework of wrong ideas, which are positively wrong, crops up, subsequently confusing the schooling of experience and representing the lesson it teaches in a false light.  If the youth was previously in the dark, he will now be led astray by a will-o’-the-wisp:  and with a girl this is still more frequently the case.  They have been deluded into an absolutely false view of life by reading novels, and expectations have been raised that can never be fulfilled.  This generally has the most harmful effect on their whole lives.  Those men who had neither time nor opportunity to read novels in their youth, such as those who work with their hands, have decided advantage over them.  Few of these novels are exempt from reproach—­nay, whose effect is contrary to bad.  Before all others, for instance, Gil Blas and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their Spanish originals); further, The Vicar of Wakefield, and to some extent the novels of Walter Scott. Don Quixote may be regarded as a satirical presentation of the error in question.

FOOTNOTES: 

[8] According to a notice from the Munich Society for the Protection of Animals, the superfluous whipping and cracking were strictly forbidden in Nuremberg in December 1858.

ON READING AND BOOKS.

Ignorance is degrading only when it is found in company with riches.  Want and penury restrain the poor man; his employment takes the place of knowledge and occupies his thoughts:  while rich men who are ignorant live for their pleasure only, and resemble a beast; as may be seen daily.  They are to be reproached also for not having used wealth and leisure for that which lends them their greatest value.

When we read, another person thinks for us:  we merely repeat his mental process.  It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher.  Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us.  This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts.  But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts.  And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—­that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself;